A Brief Analysis On Global South’s Paradigms: Global Governance Case

Sunday, 10 January 2016

By Eurasia Review/Umut Can Adisonmez

From scheduled jet airline services to millions of bookings simultaneously around the world, experiencing foreign exchange turnover $3,500 billion in a daily basis, a broadcast of CNN reaching 260 million households within a second, on the other hand, several aeroplane crashes or computer viruses which are designed by an individual who knocks off a bank account at the diametrically opposite geography in the world…

These facts are being considered as a daily routine for most communities without interrogating the insight of these facts, however, a combination of forenamed practices also poses a challenge for our reality and our perception on reality: namely globalization. To describe the phenomenon, liberalists argue that its main focus is the economic interconnectedness of actors while political realists put forward inter-state activities in terms of core-periphery relations. Nevertheless, the mutual opinion which they agree on is that intensification of supra-territoriality in the 21st-century world affairs and the decline in statism promoted the notion of global governance which emphasizes polycentric governance notion. Since the consensus has been reached by many scholars, accessing a coherent basis for operational polycentric global governance and actors of the concept have become prominent variables. From this perspective, understanding Global South is the key component to launch a more inclusionary and functioning system.

In the contemporary world, it is a fact that multinational actors and NGOs have an ability to act beyond the defined borders. For instance, agencies who are heads of global financial and communicational companies like Shell and General Motors or non-governmental organizations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International have the capacity to lobbying and involving decision-making mechanisms, shaping future global agenda on various topics from ecological preservation to transcontinental agreements.

Funded by the Open Society Foundation for South Africa (OSF-SA), the project focuses on the changing dynamics and implications of South- South cooperation, in the context of South Africa's avowed commitment to this cause in its international relations. The need to understand the complexities of South-South dynamics and their implications for foreign policy is particularly urgent for South Africa, which, while working to advance South-South multilateralism, must also contend with the corresponding need to remain true to other universal values underpinning its foreign policy as well as guarantee the specific interests of its immediate environment, that is, the African continent.

Key Themes

In recent times, South-South cooperation has received renewed attention, inspired mainly by the emergence of new southern clubs such as IBSA, BRICS and CELAC. This trend reflects a growing push by developing countries to respond to current global challenges in a coherent and concerted manner.

The IGD programme on South-South cooperation focuses on three of the key themes that presently animate the discourse on the phenomenon. These include: South-south cooperation dynamics; development cooperation in the South; and the club diplomacy of leading southern states. The current project therefore centres on the following:

Changing dynamics of South-South cooperation

The evolution that is observable in South-South cooperation has not been matched with the corresponding discourse that appreciates the nuances that define this changing phenomenon. As a way of illustration, discussions on the subject continue to take as a starting point the anti-colonial imperative of the 1950s, ignoring the push associated with the global shift in economic power coupled with the need to address shared challenges such as poverty and underdevelopment. This part of the project seeks to unpack the changing dynamics of South-South cooperation in order to enrich our conceptual understanding of the phenomenon.

South-South cooperation and South Africa's development assistance agenda

South Africa has signalled its intention to become a major player in the area of development assistance through the still to be launched South African Development Partnership Agency (SADPA). Arguably, the success of SADPA would depend to a large extent on how its conceptualisation and subsequent execution resonates with the dynamics that underpin cooperation among countries in the South. The focus of this component of the project is therefore to examine the implications of the current dynamics of South-South cooperation for South Africa's global South policy, using the policy area of development assistance as a case study.

Aims and Objectives of The Project

The aim of the project is therefore to contribute, through critical research and dialogue, towards a nuanced understanding of contemporary South-South cooperation. In particular, it seeks to appreciate the basis on which countries in the South cooperate or compete with one another, and the implication of these dynamics for South Africa's policy.

The specific objectives of the project include:

To contribute to a better understanding of the importance of the changing dynamics of South-South cooperation.

To rethink the implications of South-South cooperation for South Africa's foreign policy with a view to advocating an appropriate response to changing dynamics.

To provide valuable insights into the implications of these dynamics for South Africa's global development agenda including development cooperation.

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